TA1LGUNN3R wrote:If this is your reasoning for supporting mandatory helmet/seatbelt laws, I expect you to likewise support mandatory diet laws, mandatory eugenics programs, and mandatory prophylactic laws. All of these things contribute to the "higher health insurance premiums" and medical expenses being paid with "taxpayers' funds."

You're confusing a sensible law (drunk driving, e.g.) with an enforced money draw (seat belt laws). I shouldn't have to wear a seat belt or helmet if I don't want to. If I crash my bike and become disabled, I or my family must pay the costs. If I had free healthcare then your argument would be valid, but as it stands the only person that pays is me (legally and morally). The fact that health insurance, a program that has ruined health care in the U.S., decides to increase their premiums has nothing to do with me, because 1) insurance is voluntary, and 2) I've lived almost my entire life without health insurance. Because you wish to buy into the scam of insurance has nothing to do with me, and I shouldn't have to accommodate your lifestyle through enforced programs.

-TG

PREACH ON BROTHER!

Haggis_McMutton wrote:Do helmet laws interfere with a person’s freedom to choose whether to wear a helmet?

Yes. Many laws restrict people’s freedom to perform behaviors judged contrary to the public good. These include drunk driving laws, cellphone use laws, and infectious disease quarantine laws, to name a few. Courts usually uphold such laws as important to the nation’s well-being.Notice a slight distinction between the cases they present and helmet laws? Like maybe how all of those behaviors directly impact others?

Yes they do, but look at all these other bad things that have laws against them!

I'm surprised they didn't add "murder and pedophilia" to the list.

Also, "important to the nation's well-being" is not the standard. The standard is "compelling state interest." Big, humongous difference.

Sod the financials, if I'm driving and through no fault of my own hit a cyclist wearing a helmet and he is badly injured but recovers, that will have a very different effect on me than if, through no fault of my own, I hit a cyclist not wearing a helmet and he dies. If nothing else because at least I can try and ease any (undeserved) guilt I may feel to someone who is still alive afterwards, but there's nothing I can do for someone who has died. We read occasionally about people who have killed people completely accidentally who struggle with that for the rest of their lives, with the fact that it has a profound effect on them.

Wearing a helmet while cycling is hardly an infringement on freedom any more than people having to wear clothes in shopping malls. To claim that it's "big bad government taking away my freedom!" is just plain ridiculous.

Yeah, seems like this was a bad thread for both of them. I liked how fitz seamlessly went from accusing Tails of being old and stubborn to being young and inexperienced.

Btw. didn't see this on the CDC website. Is the reduction in no. of people using bikes because they won't wear helmets taken into account?

i.e. if we make it mandatory that you strap a pink dildo to your forehead while riding a bike I'm gonna bet that bike accidents are going to significantly drop. But probably not because the dildo makes you safer.

Oh, and for the record, the Q&A on the CDC website is complete bullshit.

Do helmet laws interfere with a person’s freedom to choose whether to wear a helmet?

Yes. Many laws restrict people’s freedom to perform behaviors judged contrary to the public good. These include drunk driving laws, cellphone use laws, and infectious disease quarantine laws, to name a few. Courts usually uphold such laws as important to the nation’s well-being.

Notice a slight distinction between the cases they present and helmet laws? Like maybe how all of those behaviors directly impact others?

If a motorcyclist chooses not to wear a helmet, does it only affect him?

No, not if the rider crashes. Unhelmeted riders injured in a crash have substantially higher healthcare costs than helmeted riders. When the rider is insured, these costs are passed on to others in the form of higher health insurance premiums. Unhelmeted riders are more likely to be uninsured than other riders. When the riders are uninsured, their medical expenses may be paid for using taxpayers’ funds.

Oh cool. So then if I'm insured I can ride without a helmet, correct ?Also, when is McDonals's becoming illegal? Coke taxed like nicotine? No? Hmm, that's odd, almost like there might be a double standard there. Nah, that couldn't be it.

I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other regarding these laws, but this bullshit peddling really gets on my nerves. It smells way too much of "reefer madness" campaigns.

Sorry, its you that should leave. Using the appropriate safety gear on public roads is just a standard thing to do.

You can compare it to a glass of coke all you want, but its utterly ridiculous. Further, there are many substances that are illegal for McDonalds to sell, because eating them, is just that dangerous.

You are actually the one with the double standard, and I understand your philosophy on the situation, but in reality, using publicly maintained and installed streets and sidewalks, comes with a responsibility to use them safely.

On your own ranch, it would be an infringement of your rights. In public areas, its simply your choice to follow the rules or not.

TA1LGUNN3R wrote:If this is your reasoning for supporting mandatory helmet/seatbelt laws, I expect you to likewise support mandatory diet laws, mandatory eugenics programs, and mandatory prophylactic laws. All of these things contribute to the "higher health insurance premiums" and medical expenses being paid with "taxpayers' funds."

Diet and prophylactic laws would be unenforcable; thus it doesnt make sense for them to be laws. I do however very much support government campaigns that educate and promote the use of healthy lifestyles and use of contreception (read: spending money on convincing people to not be fat and have unwanted pregnancies).

Eugenics is slightly different; its a grey/sliding scale in terms of ethics; telling someone they are too fat and should go on a diet is one thing, telling someone they cant have kids because their genes are a detriment to society is, for me, probably one bridge too far.

Tangent: I see democracy as needing to intervene here (and to me should intervene only on this kind of case by case basis rather than the two horse charade we currently use): This is something we should vote on as a population and decide where, along this grey scale, we should set our ethical limits.

You're confusing a sensible law (drunk driving, e.g.) with an enforced money draw (seat belt laws). I shouldn't have to wear a seat belt or helmet if I don't want to. If I crash my bike and become disabled, I or my family must pay the costs. If I had free healthcare then your argument would be valid, but as it stands the only person that pays is me (legally and morally). The fact that health insurance, a program that has ruined health care in the U.S., decides to increase their premiums has nothing to do with me, because 1) insurance is voluntary, and 2) I've lived almost my entire life without health insurance. Because you wish to buy into the scam of insurance has nothing to do with me, and I shouldn't have to accommodate your lifestyle through enforced programs.

Once again I shall state that I really think freedom for the sake of freedom is stupid. Just put your fucking helmet on.

crispybits wrote:Sod the financials, if I'm driving and through no fault of my own hit a cyclist wearing a helmet and he is badly injured but recovers, that will have a very different effect on me than if, through no fault of my own, I hit a cyclist not wearing a helmet and he dies. If nothing else because at least I can try and ease any (undeserved) guilt I may feel to someone who is still alive afterwards, but there's nothing I can do for someone who has died. We read occasionally about people who have killed people completely accidentally who struggle with that for the rest of their lives, with the fact that it has a profound effect on them.

Wearing a helmet while cycling is hardly an infringement on freedom any more than people having to wear clothes in shopping malls. To claim that it's "big bad government taking away my freedom!" is just plain ridiculous.

If you're so concerned, then drive more carefully and at lower speeds. That's your choice to do so.

Other than that, I find no compelling case to impose your standard of concern onto everyone else. Furthermore, why would a law induce more concern? What effects would it have on individual decision-making?

If anything, a helmet makes the bicyclist safer, so if you hit them, "Hey! good thing they had their helmet! Now I don't feel so bad!"

The analogy of wearing clothes in public isn't valid because not wearing a helmet is not at all offensive to one's visual senses. Exposing your dick to kids at the mall is not at all similar to exposing your flowing mane of hair while riding a bike/bicycle.

Last edited by BigBallinStalin on Mon Mar 11, 2013 6:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

TA1LGUNN3R wrote:If this is your reasoning for supporting mandatory helmet/seatbelt laws, I expect you to likewise support mandatory diet laws, mandatory eugenics programs, and mandatory prophylactic laws. All of these things contribute to the "higher health insurance premiums" and medical expenses being paid with "taxpayers' funds."

Diet and prophylactic laws would be unenforcable; thus it doesnt make sense for them to be laws. I do however very much support government campaigns that educate and promote the use of healthy lifestyles and use of contreception (read: spending money on convincing people to not be fat and have unwanted pregnancies).

Eugenics is slightly different; its a grey/sliding scale in terms of ethics; telling someone they are too fat and should go on a diet is one thing, telling someone they cant have kids because their genes are a detriment to society is, for me, probably one bridge too far.

All it takes is further conditioning and enforcement by the state to reach those conclusions--and have the majority satisfied with them.

Lootifer wrote:Tangent: I see democracy as needing to intervene here (and to me should intervene only on this kind of case by case basis rather than the two horse charade we currently use): This is something we should vote on as a population and decide where, along this grey scale, we should set our ethical limits.

Agreed, but politicians and a loud, insensible minority are relentless.

I'd rather have the scale set at lower levels--than at State or Federal. It would be much more representative of each democratic process and the general desires of the constituents.

Yeah, seems like this was a bad thread for both of them. I liked how fitz seamlessly went from accusing Tails of being old and stubborn to being young and inexperienced.

Btw. didn't see this on the CDC website. Is the reduction in no. of people using bikes because they won't wear helmets taken into account?

i.e. if we make it mandatory that you strap a pink dildo to your forehead while riding a bike I'm gonna bet that bike accidents are going to significantly drop. But probably not because the dildo makes you safer.

Oh, and for the record, the Q&A on the CDC website is complete bullshit.

Do helmet laws interfere with a person’s freedom to choose whether to wear a helmet?

Yes. Many laws restrict people’s freedom to perform behaviors judged contrary to the public good. These include drunk driving laws, cellphone use laws, and infectious disease quarantine laws, to name a few. Courts usually uphold such laws as important to the nation’s well-being.

Notice a slight distinction between the cases they present and helmet laws? Like maybe how all of those behaviors directly impact others?

If a motorcyclist chooses not to wear a helmet, does it only affect him?

No, not if the rider crashes. Unhelmeted riders injured in a crash have substantially higher healthcare costs than helmeted riders. When the rider is insured, these costs are passed on to others in the form of higher health insurance premiums. Unhelmeted riders are more likely to be uninsured than other riders. When the riders are uninsured, their medical expenses may be paid for using taxpayers’ funds.

Oh cool. So then if I'm insured I can ride without a helmet, correct ?Also, when is McDonals's becoming illegal? Coke taxed like nicotine? No? Hmm, that's odd, almost like there might be a double standard there. Nah, that couldn't be it.

I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other regarding these laws, but this bullshit peddling really gets on my nerves. It smells way too much of "reefer madness" campaigns.

I support your valid criticism of the CDC statistics and your Pink Dildo Policy.

Generally I approve of the nanny state but I am angrily anti- bike helmet laws. Even tho I always wear mine. Even tho my daughter has a scar on her head from the time she fell off without a helmet on. Don't they f***ING well know cycling is good for your health? Are they trying to mark.us out as lycra- wearing helmet-headed plonkers so as to discourage folks from getting on their bikes?!! Grrrr.The real need is for better safety features on modern cars. Every 4x4 should come fitted with 3' spikes on the inside pointed at the driver. We would see a dramatic improvement in driving standards overnight.

laughingcavalier wrote:The real need is for better safety features on modern cars. Every 4x4 should come fitted with 3' spikes on the inside pointed at the driver. We would see a dramatic improvement in driving standards overnight.

crispybits wrote:Sod the financials, if I'm driving and through no fault of my own hit a cyclist wearing a helmet and he is badly injured but recovers, that will have a very different effect on me than if, through no fault of my own, I hit a cyclist not wearing a helmet and he dies. If nothing else because at least I can try and ease any (undeserved) guilt I may feel to someone who is still alive afterwards, but there's nothing I can do for someone who has died. We read occasionally about people who have killed people completely accidentally who struggle with that for the rest of their lives, with the fact that it has a profound effect on them.

Wearing a helmet while cycling is hardly an infringement on freedom any more than people having to wear clothes in shopping malls. To claim that it's "big bad government taking away my freedom!" is just plain ridiculous.

If you're so concerned, then drive more carefully and at lower speeds. That's your choice to do so.

Other than that, I find no compelling case to impose your standard of concern onto everyone else. Furthermore, why would a law induce more concern? What effects would it have on individual decision-making?

If anything, a helmet makes the bicyclist safer, so if you hit them, "Hey! good thing they had their helmet! Now I don't feel so bad!"

The analogy of wearing clothes in public isn't valid because not wearing a helmet is not at all offensive to one's visual senses. Exposing your dick to kids at the mall is not at all similar to exposing your flowing mane of hair while riding a bike/bicycle.

If I'm doing 50mph in a 60mph limit I can think of several roads within 5 miles of my house where a cyclist could come out of nowhere with no notice from a side track and I wouldn't be able to stop in time. I would have been driving perfectly reasonably and the blame for the accident would be entirely with the cyclist. Would that make everything peachy if the cyclist died? Hardly.

Also, I can think of several ways of dressing that are highly offensive to one's visual senses, and to the visual senses of everyone else. "Because I think I look like an idiot" is not a valid objection to not wearing something that could prevent your death when partaking in a risky activity on a public highway. There are good reasons for rules and regulations on the roads, and cyclists shouldn't be any more immune to that than motorcyclists having to wear a helmet, or drivers having to wear a seatbelt.

crispybits wrote:If I'm doing 50mph in a 60mph limit I can think of several roads within 5 miles of my house where a cyclist could come out of nowhere with no notice from a side track and I wouldn't be able to stop in time. I would have been driving perfectly reasonably and the blame for the accident would be entirely with the cyclist. Would that make everything peachy if the cyclist died? Hardly.

Also, I can think of several ways of dressing that are highly offensive to one's visual senses, and to the visual senses of everyone else. "Because I think I look like an idiot" is not a valid objection to not wearing something that could prevent your death when partaking in a risky activity on a public highway. There are good reasons for rules and regulations on the roads, and cyclists shouldn't be any more immune to that than motorcyclists having to wear a helmet, or drivers having to wear a seatbelt.

So by using an extreme particular case, you somewhat can support your stance which applies to all cases? I don't find that convincing.Insurance (even in the form of helmets) lowers the costs of riskier behavior.

"Because I look like an idiot" isn't the only objection of the millions of people affected by the law, and that straw man fallacy fails to portray how people perceive their profit and opportunity cost. Nor have you succeeded in defending your incorrect analogy.

Sure, I agree with you that there are good reasons for most people to use safety devices. They may improve their chances of survival even though the chance of dying--depending on an individual's skill and circumstances--varies and may be relatively low regardless of wearing a helmet.

The economist within me asks, "What's the tradeoff between various forms* of protection and various preferences defined by one's opportunity cost**?"*(e.g. improving one's skills in cycling/driving, wearing a helmet, and/or learning to pay more attention to the road, etc.)**(e.g. flowing hair in the wind, more comfort, 20% coolness--visually and physiologically, not worrying about the helmet being stolen, not having to risk paying for another helmet, and/or not having to lug a helmet with you throughout the day, etc).

As "society," we don't know that answer, and neither do you because this tradeoff is subjectively perceived by millions of individuals and varies all the time. It's extremely complex, yet the one-size-fits-all laws and obtuse statistics pay no heed to this process.

So how can we discover the optimal tradeoff? By allowing people to make that tradeoff for him or herself, but of course feel free to advertise in favor of helmets. I wear mine all the time because my opportunity cost = significant loss of future profit from brain damage. (My profit = future prestige, capability to learn, write, earn money, make jokes, etc.--who knows what I may lose with the possibility of brain damage?) I won't risk it, but others may have lower or different opportunity costs. I acknowledge that I am in no position to dismiss their opportunity costs; however, some ITT (you, AAFitz) are being presumptuous by not acknowledging this.

Besides, the market has companies which will advertise--and beg--for people to buy their helmets. This is the profit motive at work. It aligns self-interest into complementing the general interest (a.k.a. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand).

And here's another thing about law and economics. Without a helmet mandate, then individual preferences for more coolness and whatever are allowed to be revealed. Entrepreneurs, who are seeking profits through helmet-production, now have the incentive to discover these preferences and then create cool-looking helmets which consumers are free to choose at a price. However, with a mandatory helmet law, those preferences are quashed*, thus the profit opportunity remains hidden or constrained.

*(Of course, those who break the law can reveal their preferences, but this is beside the point.)

Before we jump up and support a prohibition against Not Wearing Helmets, we should really consider the capabilities of the market, the unintended consequences, the extreme limit of one's knowledge of other people's preferences, the special interest groups who may benefit from that law (police, city governments through police tickets, local Business Bureaus), the politicians, and the judges. Most importantly, we should reflect upon the opportunities that we may lose.

Instead, some loud minority insists upon Helmet Laws, and--get this--"for the common good." And, that law gets passed. Which sounds better? To me, it's the former, cautious argument, but this latter argument--wrapped in the guise of common good--usually fails to acknowledge what it tramples underneath.

So, taken all together, plus the other objections mentioned earlier (TG's for instance), it doesn't seem you have much of an argument here--other than repeating essentially the same argument. We can choose to live in a freer society and allow others to benefit each other on a voluntary basis--free of unnecessary government intervention. Or we can overlook all these opportunities and all of those individual preferences by staunchly supporting another mindless law.

I'm in favor of a freer society, are you?

/threadedit3: (replace key terms, apply this to other threads, and /thread those threads).

Last edited by BigBallinStalin on Mon Mar 11, 2013 9:41 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Frigidus wrote:Jesus, there are actually people opposed to bike helmet laws.

Edit:

crispybits wrote:Wearing a helmet while cycling is hardly an infringement on freedom any more than people having to wear clothes in shopping malls.

I was trying to think of a comparable complaint that is obviously ludicrous, but I couldn't come up with a good one. Thank you crispybits.

C'mon, even my left testicle can tell this is a terrible analogy. The reason clothes are necessary is because nobody wants to see nietzsche's schlong out in public. It's a PUBLIC protection thing...it has nothing to do with protecting the non-clothes-wearer from themself. Helmet laws are.

I would only support helmet laws if the government handed out helmets. Otherwise, no.

inb4 "HURRDURR YOURE AN IDIOT I HOPE YOU CRASH AND DIE WITHOUT A HELMET"

Frigidus wrote:Jesus, there are actually people opposed to bike helmet laws.

Edit:

crispybits wrote:Wearing a helmet while cycling is hardly an infringement on freedom any more than people having to wear clothes in shopping malls.

I was trying to think of a comparable complaint that is obviously ludicrous, but I couldn't come up with a good one. Thank you crispybits.

C'mon, even my left testicle can tell this is a terrible analogy. The reason clothes are necessary is because nobody wants to see nietzsche's schlong out in public. It's a PUBLIC protection thing...it has nothing to do with protecting the non-clothes-wearer from themself. Helmet laws are.

I would only support helmet laws if the government handed out helmets. Otherwise, no.

inb4 "HURRDURR YOURE AN IDIOT I HOPE YOU CRASH AND DIE WITHOUT A HELMET"

Prophylactics maybe. Diet mandates are feasible and have been done. Think of the Communist regimes of Russia and China mid 20th century that forced people onto communes to grow staple crops. Or rationing during the world wars. It would be easy to implement over the course of years as well, just by banning the unsafe foods. To me, banning, say, high-fructose corn syrup in the public interest for reducing medical costs would be equal to enforcing helmet laws- that is, it would reduce costs as delineated in the CDC link and improve national health.

telling someone they cant have kids because their genes are a detriment to society is, for me, probably one bridge too far.

How? The greatest argument that the pro-laws have put forth is that it's in the public interest, or that I'm too stupid to decide for myself or that I may choose the wrong choice. So while deciding habits and activities for an adult in the spirit of public benefit it okay, how is it somehow less okay to allow unfit genes to be passed on? Either it's a moral question (the suffering endured by people with severe disabilities, e.g.), a financial one (reduced medical strain on the public), or some combination of the two. Let me put it another way: are you comfortable with the idea of an HIV-infected person conceiving a child, pretty much giving the child HIV? Or how about the knowing spread of STIs? Is it too uncomfortable of an idea to press charges against a person who didn't inform their partner when they knowingly were infected with a disease, which is yet a willful lack of concern?

'funny how the pro-helmet law supporters equate being anti-law with anti-helmet. I've never said any such thing. As a frequent motorcycle rider, I always and will always wear my full face helmet.

If you are in favor of helmets/seat belts simply because you think it's your civic duty to protect people you'll never meet, you need to apply this to all areas of life.

Frigidus wrote:Jesus, there are actually people opposed to bike helmet laws.

Edit:

crispybits wrote:Wearing a helmet while cycling is hardly an infringement on freedom any more than people having to wear clothes in shopping malls.

I was trying to think of a comparable complaint that is obviously ludicrous, but I couldn't come up with a good one. Thank you crispybits.

C'mon, even my left testicle can tell this is a terrible analogy. The reason clothes are necessary is because nobody wants to see nietzsche's schlong out in public. It's a PUBLIC protection thing...it has nothing to do with protecting the non-clothes-wearer from themself. Helmet laws are.

I would only support helmet laws if the government handed out helmets. Otherwise, no.

inb4 "HURRDURR YOURE AN IDIOT I HOPE YOU CRASH AND DIE WITHOUT A HELMET"

Frigidus wrote:Jesus, there are actually people opposed to bike helmet laws.

Edit:

crispybits wrote:Wearing a helmet while cycling is hardly an infringement on freedom any more than people having to wear clothes in shopping malls.

I was trying to think of a comparable complaint that is obviously ludicrous, but I couldn't come up with a good one. Thank you crispybits.

C'mon, even my left testicle can tell this is a terrible analogy. The reason clothes are necessary is because nobody wants to see nietzsche's schlong out in public. It's a PUBLIC protection thing...it has nothing to do with protecting the non-clothes-wearer from themself. Helmet laws are.

I would only support helmet laws if the government handed out helmets. Otherwise, no.

inb4 "HURRDURR YOURE AN IDIOT I HOPE YOU CRASH AND DIE WITHOUT A HELMET"

It isn't the reasoning behind the ban that's comparable, it's the reasoning behind the complaint about the ban. "Stop telling me what to wear! Muh freedom!" The implementation of such a law has been shown to reduce injuries, and I'm really having trouble seeing a legitimate downside beyond 'I think this looks stupid'. They are an overall good thing.

Frigidus wrote:Jesus, there are actually people opposed to bike helmet laws.

Edit:

crispybits wrote:Wearing a helmet while cycling is hardly an infringement on freedom any more than people having to wear clothes in shopping malls.

I was trying to think of a comparable complaint that is obviously ludicrous, but I couldn't come up with a good one. Thank you crispybits.

C'mon, even my left testicle can tell this is a terrible analogy. The reason clothes are necessary is because nobody wants to see nietzsche's schlong out in public. It's a PUBLIC protection thing...it has nothing to do with protecting the non-clothes-wearer from themself. Helmet laws are.

I would only support helmet laws if the government handed out helmets. Otherwise, no.

inb4 "HURRDURR YOURE AN IDIOT I HOPE YOU CRASH AND DIE WITHOUT A HELMET"